Unhealthy Care

I couldn't bring myself to watch all of today's Health Care Summit. I did see John McCain playing Cranky Old Man with nothing positive to offer. I did see Sen. John Barrasso (a Republican doctor from Wyoming) tell us how a Canadian premier just went to Florida to get heart surgery, which seemed to be another way of saying, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with our health system. It works for rich, important people!" I saw Obama smack down some factually-unsound claims. But most of all, I saw Republicans fall back on their two big cures for whatever's wrong. One is tort reform and the other is selling insurance across state lines. Neither one would do much more than increase profits for insurance companies. Ezra Klein explains why this "opening up the market" is really just another way to further deregulate an industry that's killing people (literally) because it's so unregulated.